


Boots

by SandwichesYumYum



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Complete, F/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-07 06:59:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11618385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandwichesYumYum/pseuds/SandwichesYumYum
Summary: Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth. A sort of...not VERY smutty...but definitely naked...wedding night thing? For Nurdles.





	Boots

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nurdles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nurdles/gifts).



> Thank you, Nurdles, for your many kindnesses and your support over these recent times, which have been trying. Your friendship means a great deal to me. :)
> 
> Thank you, Mikki, for your swift ears and the confirmation of the thing herein!
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. Not even their boots.

Jaime pauses, his hand half raised, allowing his eyes to be drawn back to the bed. On it, naked and sleeping, is his wife.

 _My wife._ Just thinking the words makes his breath catch in his throat. He had never thought to own them.

They rarely go for grandiosity this far in the North, so Brienne is sleeping on her side, unable to quite stretch out fully on what passes for comfort here, even in a noble home, if a long neglected one. She is content enough in her rest and Jaime spends a moment looking over her form, at the softness of chest and hip that others never see.

He feels himself stirring at the sight, and at thoughts of what has passed already. At times clumsy, but never far from tender, their first couplings have already moved beyond what he thought he knew. 

Brienne had come to this bedchamber much as she would anything else she feared. With bravery. But after standing beside the bed like a large, freckled gatepost for what felt like far too long, Jaime had moved to her and touched her neck, where the claws of a bear had once dug deep. She, in turn, had touched his arm and the welter of scars there without a trace of disgust, only care; and so it was the marks setting them apart from others that bound them together more deeply in that moment than anything else could.

What came after was perfect and far from it. Shyness, frustration and doubt all had to be faced, but that they did, and if there was a lack of the desperation he once thought everything in their coming together, he found a world more in being held and holding afterwards, for no reason other than their both wanting it.

Their second time was yet better, these first fears being softly shed, and Jaime has high hopes that what has started as awkward, but pleasing discovery, will soon become as natural as breathing.

His wife's long left arm meanders its way out in front of her and, as if she can already feel the lack of him, she begins to wake, her astonishing eyes staring blankly at the space beside her. Then she looks up and sees him. For the sparest of moments Brienne appears wretched, her voice, which begins thick with sleep, somehow growing thin. "Are you leaving?"

He decides not to tease her about the faint likelihood of his parading around in front of all and sundry, bare as a newborn babe, for he knows she does not quite believe how he sees her yet. That she cannot. Instead, Jaime folds a promise he knows he will keep into a single word. "Never," he whispers, and lifts a finger to his lips, tilting his head at the door. 

Still clambering back into state of wakefulness, Brienne shifts her weight up onto an elbow, close to smiling at him at that lone word while she gathers a blanket around her body in needless protection from his gaze. She doesn't even seem to think about it. Jaime believes it will be some time before she moves past that, though he'd much rather she did it the sooner. 

"Are they still out there?" Brienne asks, with a meekness that doesn't become her, blinking at the door. Strong she may be, but she can be wounded, and if they had been offered a safe haven for a night or two, their hosts had received them out of fear more than respect, some of the men showing far less of the latter.

Jaime just grins, raises his hand further, and thumps his palm on the solid oak three times. Outside, feet can be heard as those trying to listen scramble away. "I'm not sure they ever left," he replies as he makes his way back to their marriage bed, meeting her wariness with a lack of care about the thoughts of the more foolish among their hosts who, just last evening, said they did not know if the wife or the husband would find this marriage the greater burden.

He'd had to track her so far that there was barely a septon to be found, just one a few villages back Jaime dragged along, knowing he was closing in on Brienne. The lost man of prayer seemed to be on a quest of his own, if only one to try every taproom North of the Neck. So the words they had both repeated with sureness first came, slurred and ale-soaked, from a septon with no known acquaintance with any bathtub, though he was otherwise friendly enough. This remote and small keep, outwardly in a state of disrepair, is cleaner, though less welcoming, only the presence of two Valyrian steel swords and a golden hand sufficient to keep the distrust of those remaining in check, at first. 

The feast had been no such thing, with supplies already running low; Jaime doubts these people will survive the winter that is now come if they refuse to heed his advice and move to a larger holdfast, where stores are being laid in. Their flight from the Ironborn at Torrhen's Square was too swift and though it has been some time since, they remain ill-prepared for the trials ahead. At least Jaime can give them extra time, and fear combined with the offer of some few provisions from the following body of Lannister men secured him and Brienne this time alone together. It was only her word, that promised no harm to the women hidden here, nor to their scant remaining sworn swords, that finally brokered this exchange. Jaime's word now means less than it ever did in the North, and it was worthless enough to begin with.

He decides he can't bring himself to care as he lays himself back down on his side, next to his wife. He can only smile at her, though she seems distant, caught in her own thoughts. "Are you well?" he asks.

Brienne gives a short nod. "Yes," she says, and Jaime finds himself relieved when his smile is returned, honest and now clear of any doubt. "You?"

"Couldn't be better. Mayhaps a bigger bed? I had thought that even the _distant_ cousins of the Tallharts would be...longer," Jaime comments, rubbing his heel on the footboard. Then he briefly stretches his right arm out behind him, into what feels like an acre of empty bed. "They do seem to be wider than most, though. I believe we can spare ourselves the worry of them starving, after all."

"We shouldn't insult our hosts," Brienne warns.

"I don't think they're listening anymore," Jaime tells her, doing his best to steal as much of her blanket as he can with just his stump. "It really is cold here," he adds, as his wife grimaces and covers them both.

"It's the North, Jaime. In winter." 

"I am well aware of that, Brienne. You made me follow you for near on a thousand miles, up into this frozen wasteland."

With a cry of outrage, they are both subjected to the chill again immediately, when Brienne pushes Jaime into his back and almost vaults up to sit astride him. Less than a moment's consideration is needed for him to decide he doesn't mind. "I made you do no such thing!" Brienne protests, her mind and his apparently working along wholly differing paths.

She leans forward, rearing up over him and Jaime lets out a small groan at the loss of her heat where he wants it most. Still, she is grown fierce and there is some fond remembrance to be had of that. All they need is a bridge, a hodge-podge of old armour and some rags, and they could be back in time. Years past. Jaime feels it fitting, though the sensation passes soon enough when Brienne lifts a hand and swats the end of his nose with two fingers, as if he were an ill-trained pup.

"What?" Jaime says, though he hardly feels put upon. If anything, he finds Brienne becoming this comfortable in nothing but her own skin with him very promising. Above him, and plainly oblivious to his thoughts, Brienne stares down defiantly, though the twitching of her lips tells another story entirely. 

Her words, however, are blunt. "You pissed on my boots."

"Oh," Jaime breathes, only to be overtaken by laughter beneath her when the memory, forged so long ago, surges back. His good humour almost takes her with him, though he can see her fight the urge. "I see," he says, quite happily as his amusement begins to ebb, even though Brienne moves to sitting up once more, resting her weight on his thighs now instead of somewhere a touch more pleasing. "Is this how our marriage is to be?" he asks her. "Have you a list? It must be a long one."

"You, my Lord husband," his wife says, tapping a finger firmly on the middle of his chest and bending her will to keeping her composure, "pissed on my _boots."_

He prods her thigh in return. "I was your _prisoner."_

"You were insulting." 

"I truly was," Jaime admits, lazily stretching his arms out against the bolsters and looking up at her with pride. "You refused to let me near your blades and I wasn't sure a rock would break your head. How else was I to escape you?"

Brienne sniffs and inspects the chamber around them. "Well, your _mouth_ seems to have failed you."

"I've found better uses for it since. Not to mention the part that did the pissing."

Brienne's gaze is suddenly locked to wall above the bed while she fights the always hopeless battle against the reddening of her own skin. "I liked those boots," she eventually mumbles down at him, aiming for sullen and missing by miles. 

"I'll get you more boots," Jaime says, tugging at the crooks of her knees with stump and fingers. "Now come here."

As Jaime fully expects, the result is the opposite of his husbandly entreaty. He wouldn't have it otherwise. "Oh, I see," Brienne says, her hands taking up residence on her hips. "Is _this_ how our marriage is to be?"

"Yes, though I'll follow you well enough too. I have before." And because he can, because he wants to, Jaime chooses to remind his wife that he can do the pinning, not just being the pinned; grabbing at her waist and rolling them over until he is leaning over her instead. "Remember, Brienne? Yesterday? When I was following you?"

As if from out of nowhere, Brienne herself begins to laugh beneath him, even as she raises a hand to his shoulder, for in truth Jaime is not quite steady in his place. A missing hand will do that, they've quickly found. The sound of this laughter is something new to him, girlish and soft and free. 

He believes she is thinking of their meeting, not far from here, when Jaime had come upon her in a clearing in less impressive a manner than he had wished, given that he had been forced to clumsily lash the septon to himself on his horse to stop him sliding off every half a mile. The septon had accepted this treatment with remarkable cheer, even helping with the rope as best he could, but Jaime can only think that this made his arrival all the more absurd. Still, if it has provoked this happiness in his new wife, Jaime considers it a price worth paying.

He watches Brienne's features, softened and warmed, most likely at his expense, not that he cares one whit as that warm noise seems to wrap around and caress them both. It's not the laughter he has known before, often cruel and with the fleeting life of a dayfly. It's something born of joy, a joy that can grow and linger, not to be snatched away on a hidden whim. Nor is it what he has seen of Brienne herself, the bleaker humour that she sometimes let slip, in the face of foolishness or adversity. She is carefree, if just for these moments, and it is beautiful.

It lasts much longer than Jaime would have guessed, but ends too soon, Brienne settling her head in place on the blankets with a contented sigh. "The septon," she explains, with a grin, fleeting and shy. "He kept singing 'I am on a horse', over and over. You might as well have sounded your approach with a large bell." Jaime can only smile at her in return, because she is telling it true, though he must be looking at her strangely, for Brienne's gaze turns curious. "What?" she asks.

"That's the first time I've ever heard you laugh like that," Jaime says quietly, more in love with her than he knew. 

Overwhelmed by the knowledge, Jaime shakes his shoulder to free Brienne's hand and draws himself closer to her, the feel of her body against his now a need. She is strong enough to bear him, though as that need presses against her again, Brienne starts, not in alarm or revulsion, as Jaime reads it, but in sheer confusion. Her mouth falls open as what she might have noticed before becomes all too plain. "You still want - ?" 

"Yes," Jaime nods surely at the unfinished question, then dropping a soft kiss to her bottom lip. "I seem to recall _wanting_ you twice before, in the hours just past." He props himself back up on his elbows, which has the pleasant result of both letting him see her better and nestling him more neatly between her legs, where all is warm and good. "Or have you forgotten that too?"

 _"No,"_ Brienne smiles. Yet then, the happiness seems to drain from her before Jaime's eyes. Her cheeks run to pallor and her gaze skitters away. "I just...I know you cannot love me, Jaime." She can't even bring herself to look at him as she says it, a whisper of agony he can barely hear, even this close.

This is not a fear or a doubt. This is what Brienne still takes for a truth, one she believes is unbending, having heard nothing but since her youth; that she cannot be loved. That it is impossible. She has no idea how wrong she is.

Jaime drops his head to the scars on her neck that bonded them together, probably years before either of them knew it. "You say I cannot love you," he tells those ruddy marks, his mouth playing there with a gentle ease until he feels a hitch in her breath. He presses another, lingering kiss to them. Her skin tastes of salt and smells of love. "But, my wife," Jaime says, bringing his face to hers so Brienne can see a new truth, "I already do."

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you kindly for reading. :)


End file.
